Zogby family business returns to Broad Street

Veteran pollster John Zogby is back home at 901 Broad St.

Zogby, whose former business occupied the Utica office building for a decade, now works as a senior analyst for his son Jonathan’s company, Zogby Analytics. That company moved to the site of the former IBOPE Zogby International call center on Jan. 1.

Uticaod

Writer

Posted Apr. 8, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Apr 8, 2013 at 8:21 AM

Posted Apr. 8, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Apr 8, 2013 at 8:21 AM

UTICA

Veteran pollster John Zogby is back home at 901 Broad St.

Zogby, whose former business occupied the Utica office building for a decade, now works as a senior analyst for his son Jonathan’s company, Zogby Analytics. That company moved to the site of the former IBOPE Zogby International call center in early January.

“It was seamless,” said John Zogby. “Everything worked out nicely.”

The building came up for grabs late last year after IBOPE jettisoned all of its polling contracts, laid off nearly all of its Utica employees and shut down the call center. The last employee left on Dec. 31, when the company’s final government contract expired.

Taking over the Broad Street office had certain advantages for Zogby Analytics, namely that the building still has a call center and the staff no longer have to work from home, Zogby said.

“It’s the same work being done by many of the same people,” he said. “It was a transition time; my son was able to get the equipment and just about all of the contracts back.”

Zogby Analytics did not initially think it would get the call center back but jumped when it had the chance, Jonathan Zogby said.

“We just want to be able to give back to the community, we want this area to always be our headquarters and we want Zogby and Utica to always by synonymous,” he said.

The company employees 46 people, six full-time and 40 part-time.

Previously, the company was outsourcing its call center work inside the United States.

The elder Zogby founded his polling company in 1984 after a failed run for Utica mayor, and soon became well known on cable news shows as his company correctly predicted several presidential races. In 1994, Zogby also correctly predicted that George Pataki would upset three-term gubernatorial incumbent Mario Cuomo.

The company did more than political polling, however; the majority of its business was opinion research for corporations.

In January 2010, Zogby announced he was selling a majority stake in the company to IBOPE Inteligencia, a Brazilian research firm headquartered in Miami, and changing the name to IBOPE Zogby International.

The younger Zogby’s company does the same kind of polling, but has added an emphasis on online research to the traditional phone-based polls.

“That was the direction the business was headed and we’ve always been ahead of the curve,” John Zogby said.